Vending machines are a very popular method of selling merchandise. Bulk venders, for example, in which a metered amount of product stored in bulk in a bin is dispensed upon payment of a required amount of money, can be used for the self-service purchase of myriad types of products. Such vending machines provide a cost-effective way of selling bulk product, in part because they can be located in unsupervised locations and therefore involve very low overhead.
One of the consequences of locating a vending machine in an unsupervised location is that there is no salesperson to attract purchasers or interest prospective customers in the products being vended. The vending machine itself must have a sufficiently interesting and appealing presence to attract purchasers and interest purchasers in the product. Bulk vending machines are nevertheless a popular way of selling small merchandise such as toys and confectionary, part of their popularity being due to the entertainment value associated with the action of a purchaser and the visible reaction of the machine in the dispensing of bulk product. Children in particular are attracted by the visual appeal of bulk product displayed and the product dispensing process. As such, bulk vending machines virtually universally stock product in transparent bins for the visual appeal, and are often manufactured with very large product bins and/or elaborate dispensing paths made deliberately viewable by the purchaser, to increase visual appeal and entertainment value of the vending machine.
For these reasons, while in the past it was common to provide a single bulk vender which stored a single type of product for dispensing to a purchaser, more recently it has become common to locate a cluster or group of bulk venders in one location, sometimes referred to as a bulk vending “island.” This offers purchasers the choice of a variety of bulk product, for example different types of confectionaries, while at the same time increasing the visual appeal of the vending installation and thus increasing the attraction to prospective purchasers.
Systems have been designed for the selective actuation of one or more bulk venders in such a group of bulk venders actuated from a common control station. These systems have been known and used for many decades in self-contained vending machines which vend a variety of types of single articles. For example, in one such type of vending machine a plurality of a particular product item such as a candy bar, package of gum, bag of potato chips etc. is stocked in a coil which, when rotated, advances the product toward a dispensing portion of the machine. A window located at the front of the machine allows a purchaser to watch the dispensing operation. Multiple coils are provided for the vending of different items, each coil supporting a plurality of a particular item. In this type of vending machine a control panel is provided allowing the purchaser, following payment of the required amount, to select a particular article from the variety of articles stocked in the vender by entering an alphanumeric code visually associated with the coil containing the desired product. In response to the purchaser's selection, the coil containing the selected article is actuated through a single rotation, which in an auger-like fashion advances each article seated in the coil toward the front of the machine. By the end of the dispensing cycle the foremost product drops from the coil into a dispensing area accessible to the purchaser.
However, such machines are capable of dispensing only one item, and thus one product type, with each dispensing cycle. Similarly, in a conventional bulk vender island the selection of a product, whether directly or via a shared control panel, actuates only the particular vender containing the selected product and thus dispenses only the single type of product stored in the selected bulk vender. A purchaser may select product from different bulk venders in the island, but must purchase and collect the product from each bulk vender in separate individual transactions.
It would be advantageous to provide to purchasers an opportunity to create a mix of different product types, for example different types of confectionaries, in a single dispensing operation. Such venders would provide a virtually unlimited number of permutations and combinations of bulk mixtures, and allow a purchaser to select specific metered amounts of each product, the various products being dispensed into a single container.
Providing open rigid containers for receiving merchandise in such a multi-vender vending machine can result in dust or other contaminants accumulating in the container prior to a purchase. Also, automatically sealing a rigid container into which bulk product has been dispensed is an involved operation requiring both precision and the ability to accommodate slight deviations between containers, and is thus difficult to effect consistently.
Consumers in modern society are very health conscious, and need a high degree of confidence that the bulk product being dispensed is not contaminated. Consumers also often wish to know the nutritional content of foodstuffs being purchased, and in some regions regulations may require that the nutritional content and/or identification of ingredients of foodstuffs be made available to purchasers on food packages so that the information remains available after purchase of the product.